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Archive for ‘PROJECTS I HAVE VISITED’

In May 2015 we were lucky to stay 3 weeks as volunteers at Permaculture site Melliodora with David Holmgren, co-founder of the Permaculture movement, and his partner Su Dennet in Victoria Australia!

For both of us, deeply committed permaculturist, staying at one of the oldest Permaculture sites in the world was a great confirmation of the path we are walking on! Our stay in Melliodora was a profound inspiration in living life self-responsible, ethical and sustainable.

With over 30 years of existence, Melliodora, named after a native Australian Eucalypt (Yellowbox), it is one of the best examples of intensive Permaculture in the world as well as one of the best documented sites giving vital evidence for how applied Permaculture Design functions and looks like.

About aspects of sustainable living in Perth – about permaculture projects, urbane permaculture, dumpster diving,community projects, low impact life, organic gardening, urbane culture and how we have explored it all as travellers…

I am writing this now that I have time. A lot of time. I am in kind of political social economic – you name it – refugee kind of state. I had to rush to leave Australia because my permission to be a legal alien within the boundaries of the continent had expired. I have overstayed my visa illegally – of course – and now I am at the mercy of the civil servants of the department of immigration to grand me re-entry. My refuge island is Bali in Indonesia – I know it could be much worse.
Our car is parked at Darwin airport since November 10th and the parking meter is ticking at a rate of 12$ a day!
It has been 16 days now since I have left the Commonwealth and still no visa. I wait and with the gift of time I can now after one year without writing a single word try the retrospective and tell our story of one year in Australia…

After nearly one year in South East Asia that led us deeper into the world of sustainability, spirituality, health, ecology,
community living, permaculture and so many interesting ideas more, that only enriched our awareness and meaning in
life, we only had a deepened urge for a simple life with as little impact as possible on the biosphere as we live and travel in Australia.

Pictures can explain better than to many words, which means I’ll write just briefly about our PDC course but I have posted a lot of pictures!!! First of all: It was such a great experience that I need to share this with you guys and I hope you will too, share with many people more.
That’s also why I can not stop encouraging everyone to look into Permaculture! It is for everyone, it is fun and meaningful and a real solution to our global, local and even personal problems!
PDC stands for Permaculture Design Course and was developed by Bill Mollison to teach principles and foundations of sustainable design.
All PDC courses offered throughout the world must follow the same format. The idea and concept behind it is, to give participants of the course no matter in which part of the world, the basic skills and understanding to design whatever it might be like your life, your house, your garden or any project in a permaculture way.
People who take the course will learn and understand the principles and philosophy of permaculture and will be given lessons in ecology, design, system thinking, food forestry, urban permaculture and many things more!
A great website providing PDC lectures for free is permaculture-media-download.com/introduction-to-permaculture

Photographs of Tacomepai and links to other projects at the end of the article…

Since we have set out on this journey, our Ideas on how to live and travel have fundamentally changed.
We have grown so much more conscious about so many things. Life feels so much more real, happy, meaningful and great. Both of our lives have changed a lot through discovering these new and deep perspectives of life that we have found in experiencing permaculture at the Panya project and other places, learning and understanding meditation and spirituality, staying in nature and meeting all these energetic, like minded awakened people living for positive change!

We left the Panya Project for Tacomepai near Pai (Northern Thailand). Tacomepai is not a farm in the sense of food production for profit neither are Panya or Pun Pun or any other projects that we have visited. That’s important to know to understand why we all of a sudden are so much into farms. That’s also why we call them by a different name like permaculture place or project or sustainability projects etc.
So what is Tacomepai then?Tacomepai is a traditional organic community farm run by a local Yon family. It also is a living space for anyone who wants to learn from and stay with Sandot, the owner, how to live, build, teach, eat healthy, learn about wild foods etc. in a sustainable way with a lot of freedom, independence of much money, happiness and in balance with nature.

Sandots philosophy in short is back to nature, back to the forest and keeping traditions and local knowledge alive.
Living a simple life, sustainable and self sufficient with nature rather than against her! He really is a creative inspiriting happy character.
The farm is about 15 acre in size. He has rice paddies, where he grows organic sticky rice which he plants once a year with a seed ball method similar to Fukuoka.
The rest of Tacomepai, about two thirds of the land, is reforested and pretty wild. He doesn’t have annual gardens since in his opinion only what grows naturally is strong and healthy and that is what he eats.
Volunteers however mostly feed from vegetables from the market and rice from the farm.
There are many huts spread around the property all build in traditional hill tribe style. The whole farm has a very rural feel to it and life is very close to nature. Sandot is a very dedicated person trying to share his knowledge and visions and educate the local community, farmers and of course the many foreign volunteers that come visit.
Sandot has recently started a new project near Tacomepai. It’s primary goals are reforestation,
education and promotion of alternative and sustainable farming and living!!!
The big dream is to create a new eco village.
There is plenty of opportunity to help, learn and also to live there and create and realize own ideas!

Everyone is talking about problems. The news literally bombard us with negativity, documentaries and books teach us about the horrors of our reality and we do it with each other, too. I am not saying that it’s all bad, one of the good thing about it, is that we increase and share our knowledge and awareness and strengthen our ability for critical thinking. Without answers to the problems we are uncovering though, all of this knowledge can have a strong negative and depressing and even devastating effect on us, it can create great hopelessness, fear and anger inside us.

With the next few articles, I want to write about a few possible solutions to some of the problems we as human kind are currently facing. Inspired by what people have achieved at Panya, which is just one of many projects around the globe,
that shows alternatives, I want to tell and show a little more about this alternative lifestyle.
It won’t of course appeal to everyone and it is not a solution for the entire planet but I guess a little bit of it can be
inspiring to many. I hope you discover something new and I’d be more than happy to get feedback.

I have spent a good two month now at the Panya project in Moo Bahn Mae Jo in northern Thailand.
Everyday is a day of learning new things and skills. That makes it such an extraordinary experience, so different from a daily routine. Everyday is exciting. As I interpret our times, to me it is obvious that environmentally and economically and even spiritually we need answers and alternatives to our current reality. Most people understand that now, I believe though many lacking knowledge of alternatives, answers and solutions. So lets look forward and focus on solutions!

A short photo slide show to start with from the last Permaculture Introduction Course at Panya.

What is Panya?

Panya is a non-profit permaculture project (?WHAT IS PERMACULTURE?) which has evolved toward an educational center, inspiring and teaching volunteers from around the world